Carbon Dioxide Landscape

23 July 2005This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows a view of some of the widely-varied terrain of the martian south polar residual cap. The landforms here are composed mainly of frozen carbon dioxide. Each year since MGS arrived in 1997, the scarps that bound each butte and mesa, or line the edges of each pit, in the south polar region, have changed a little bit as carbon dioxide is sublimed away. The scarps retreat at a rate of about 3 meters (~3 yards) per martian year. Most of the change occurs during each southern summer.

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